Wisconsin union membership falls to 11.2%

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, union membership in Wisconsin fell to 11.2% last year from 13.3% in 2011. Nationally, membership declined from 11.8% in 2011 to 11.3% in 2012. In 1983, when the bureau first began collecting comparable data, membership across the country topped 20%, with 17.7 million union workers. In 2012, there were 14.4 million union members. Among full-time wage and salary workers, union members had median usual weekly earnings of $943, compared to workers who were not union members, who had median weekly earnings of $742. North Carolina had the lowest percentage of union workers, at 2.9%; New York had the highest, at 23.2%.